How do you decline a guest with bad reputation?

[Leslie9]

I want to decline a guest who has 2 reviews. The recent one is very bad. The host cannot recommend the guest since the guest was rude and did not follow house rules.

How best to Decline the guest?

I don't want to block out the dates since I want to keep them open for someone else to book.

I told the person that other people are inquiring about the room and they have first priority. The person wants to know when I can let them know. I prefer to just hit the Decline button with a white lie.

What have you done in this situation?

[Frank10]

@Leslie9 

Declining a guest doesn't automatically block the dates. This is an option that airbnb presents you when you decline and you can check a box that says not to block the dates. You don't have to make any excuses when declining a guest. In fact, I would be up front and let them know that "Based on your review history on Airbnb, I am not comfortable accpething this request." 

Even if you accidentally block the dates during the decline, just go back to your calendar and unblock them 🙂

[Leslie9]

Thanks. I just declined with "I don't think you are a good fit."

[Frank10]

@Leslie9

It's understandable, I feel bad declining people as well, but also feel relief! Trust your instincts and, in this case, trust the reviews! In this case, you were lucky that this wasn't a first timer who had no reviews. You dodged a bullet 🙂 

[Leslie9]

I do feel lucky. See my reply to @Catherine.

[Leslie9]

Meant to say: See my reply to @Clare.

[Clare0 · Accepted solution]

@Leslie9 I would just Decline and mark as the reason "Not a good fit" or you can use a white lie.  Just be careful not to say something that can be proven false, like the dates are not available.  Getting into a conversation, like another guest has priority just invites more discussion like "when will you know".  If you already know that you want to decline a request, just do it and don't feel like you have to tell the guest a story...it creates more propblems. 

[Leslie9]

I already got the follow-up "When will you know about the availability?"

I just responded: Not a good fit.

I feel bad, but extra words are irrelevant. So I just left it at that. But I do feel bad! My first Decline.

Thank you.

[Clare0]

@Leslie9 Why do you feel bad?  You should be grateful that you dodged a bullet and that the previous host told it like it was in a review. 

If he had made the effort to be a better guest, you would have accepted him.  I hope your feeling bad doesn't ever extend to not writing a bad review for someone.  In this case the previous host may have save you countless headaches and I hope you will do the same, if merited, for the hosts that get a request from one of your bad guests. 

🙂

[Leslie9]

Just a few minutes after I sent the "I do not think you are a good fit." the person replied:

Nice. Would have been a colossal waste staying at that rundown shack you call your "place"

The person also changed their picture from a face photo to some other image.

airbnb posts street addresses. I show a photo of the outside of my house. The person could easily find my house.

P.S. I don't feel bad anymore.

[Clare0]

@Leslie9 What a prince of guy! No, Airbnb doesn't publish addresses of listings until a reservation is confirmed.  I wouldn't worry about his coming to your place...he has too many other issues to deal with including finding a host who will accept him as a guest. 

[Fiona2]

I think it is a mistake to show a picture of the outside of your house, you should take that down.

Why lie to people? Just say it won't work for you and hit "decline" in the future rather than inventing fictitious reasons you can't approve. You really dodged a bullet with this charmer.

[Megan188]

I was not sure how to handle this situation so thank you so much for posting this question and to those who responded!  

The person requesting to be my guest had just one review that stated she had broken a deck chair and in addition the last owner had difficulty communicating with her, plus house rules were broken.  They left a rating of just 2.5 for this guest.   My decline message to this lady was just as Frank had recommended in the comments here (thanks Frank!),  and I also left a message for AirBnB, hoping there will be no penalty for declining as my reason was justified in my opinion.  My calendar was not automatically blocked following the decline.

[Sarah977]

One thing that's valuable to do if you see a bad guest review, if it's the only one like that, the rest are good or okay, is to cross reference that review by clicking on the host's profile who gave that review. Of course none of us want a bad guest, and I'm not suggesting that we "give them a second chance", but occasionally when you go to the host's profile and read through the reviews left by their other guests, or check out the reviews they've left for guests, you find that the host has a history of nit-picking all their guests. Just like there's difficult guests, there are also difficult hosts. Some hosts seem to just be doing it for the money and you can sort of tell that they really aren't suited for hosting and actually can't stand having other people in their homes.

[Kelly757]

I’m also facing this issue. I cannot tap on the hosts profiles of the two bad reviews? I’m trying on the app though